Sustaining and replicating obesity prevention projects: North Carolina's Fit Together Initiative

Obesity during childhood is a growing public health issue in North Carolina. Maintaining and replicating successful statewide childhood obesity prevention programs may reduce or eliminate future weight-related health problems. Through its Fit Together initiative, the North Carolina Health and Wellness Trust Fund (HWTF) funded 21 grantee organizations to address obesity prevention in children by promoting increased physical activity and healthier eating habits. These grantees, who are in their final funding year, have successfully built projects to promote healthy changes in schools and communities. Ensuring these projects are sustained, replicable, and continue to have positive health outcomes is a priority for HWTF and the grantee.

The Technical Assistance Team from the Duke Department of Community and Family Medicine is providing strategic guidance to grantees in how to effectively plan and execute sustainability plans for their childhood obesity prevention projects. Activities include conference calls; site visits; annual meetings; and a grantee workshop promoting a ten-step process to formulate sustainability plans. Assistance has varied depending on the type of grantee organization and project scope. For example, grantees with school-based projects required different sustainability strategies than grantees with community, faith-based, or medical center projects.

The Technical Assistance Team is assisting HWTF in broadening the Fit Together Initiative's efforts by developing and implementing a plan to identify replicable projects and activities. Strategies include establishing project and activity selection criteria; reporting replicable processes; and identifying project reach capacity. HWTF plans to use this information to further disseminate project successes both statewide and beyond.